First look: new Amazon Video on Demand delivers, with caveat

Amazon has retired its rocky Unbox service in favor of Video on Demand, with a …

Amazon has officially taken the wraps off of its Unbox successor, dubbed simply Video on Demand. This time around, Amazon is selling a no-hassle, cross-platform service for streaming movies and TV shows. The big question is: will customers want to purchase video that largely remains in the cloud?

Visiting Amazon's new Video on Demand site, the focus on simplicity and streaming content to a Mac or PC is immediately apparent. Amazon touts a catalog movies and TV shows that is over 40,000 titles strong, and we'll take its word on that for now. Breezing through the aisles, we see a good balance between new and old content that looks to be on par with the market-leading iTunes Store. The various TV networks are represented pretty well, including NBC who made a not-so-quiet departure from the iTunes Store last year.

There isn't too much to speak of in relation to Amazon's browsing experience, though movie trailers and TV series bumpers begin streaming as soon as you select an item to view. This is a distinct UI choice when compared to similar video outlets like the iTunes Store and Zune Marketplace, as most other stores simply present a list of available content and a preview button which must be manually clicked before any video begins playing. Amazon is probably hoping that a more in-your-face approach might grab customers' attention, reel them in without requiring any effort, and ultimately boost sales.

It may go without saying these days, but considering that Video on Demand is mostly a web-based service, all video is played through Flash. Amazon also uses Flash in various parts of the store, and especially in the library management area for displaying video metadata and other important information.

On the sales side of things, Video on Demand offers some refreshing differences when compared to the competition. For instance, virtually every movie we clicked was available both to rent and purchase in prices ranging from $2.99-3.99 for rentals, and $9.99-14.99 for purchases (Star Trek: Nemesis was the only exception we found; it could only be purchased). TV shows are $1.99 a pop, but prices for entire seasons—including "TV passes" for current seasons that will deliver new episodes over time—typically beat the iTunes Store pretty well ("One Tree Hill" Season 5, for example, is $28.65 at Amazon, 35.82 at iTunes). Plus, customers don't have to pay full price up front for a TV pass, it's really just an agreement to subscribe which earns you a 5 percent discount for each episode you buy (making them $1.89 apiece). TV passes can be cancelled at any time, and you keep the episodes you already purchased.

Making demands

We opted to give Video on Demand a run-through by renting Will Ferrell's "Semi-Pro (Unrated)," and purchasing an episode of Heroes Volume 2. The purchasing process is simple for Video on Demand content, and Amazon's rules for rented movies allow a pretty standard 24-hour window in which to watch them. Amazon continues the digital video distribution trend of not offering TV shows for rental; they can only be purchased.

A "Your Video Library" area organizes all of your purchases and rentals, though an odd quirk of UI design here lists TV shows side-by-side with movies (including rented ones) in alphabetical order. This is a slightly disjointing, or at the least, disorganized, experience when coming from other stores and applications, where these three types of content are segregated for management and organizational purposes.

Since Amazon is mostly billed a streaming service even if content is purchased, "Semi-Pro" was naturally available to begin watching immediately after finishing the transaction. Streamed video runs at 480p with data rates between 300Kbps and 1.2Mbps, so quality was up there with many of the other major streaming outlets like ABC and Hulu. Ferrell's homage to the ABA and other videos we watched played steadily, and they even looked decent when full-screened on a 22-inch, 1680 x 1050 display.

Going mobile (or not)

Amazon offers a few ways to get Video on Demand content off your computer display. If you own a TiVo, a compatible Sony BRAVIA HDTV and $300 Sony BRAVIA Internet Video Link, or a handful of compatible portable devices, you're in luck. Unfortunately, since we don't have any of those things handy at the moment, we couldn't test this aspect of the service.

In a nutshell, though, Amazon allows purchased content to be downloaded to up to two PCs and/or TiVos at a time, as well as two portable devices at a time. Rented movies can only be downloaded to a single PC or TiVo, and not any portable devices.

If you begin watching a rented movie on your PC, it cannot be downloaded at all. You either download it first and watch it somewhere else, or you begin watching it in a browser on your PC, and finish it there as well.

Good news for those who hope to download, though, is that video quality ramps up a bit. Each video item offers its own file size and bitstream quality, but Video on Demand content typically clocks in at 1GB per hour of content. If you download Star Trek: Nemesis to a PC or TiVo, for example, it will be 2.4 or 2.6GB with data rates of 2,500Kbps and 2,800Kbps, respectively. The same film in the iTunes Store is only half the size at 1.25Gbps.

As is generally the case with video services that aren't the iTunes Store these days, the PlaysForSure DRM that Amazon uses for downloaded files means that iPods and iPhones are out of the picture.

The ultimate question of life, the universe, and video on demand

Overall, Amazon's second pass at a digital video distribution outlet can be considered a success if you consider its target demographic. As efforts like Hulu and all the individual networks make the browser a more compelling video medium, it's clear that more consumers than ever are happy to stream content to their computer displays.

The uniqueness of Amazon's approach with Video on Demand can also not be underestimated, as it may very well have struck a good balance between "owning" content (to the extent that DRM allows) and (not) having to manage it. With the ability to purchase content but not have to download it—and requisition all the storage space it requires—customers can access their content from almost any high-speed Internet connection. Plus, with the renewed interest in extremely small computers that offer just the bare essentials, hooking up a tiny PC (or other device that can handle Flash) to a TV is a cheap and simple way to get all this content into the living room.

That said, there are still a number of problems with Video on Demand in its initial debut. A lack of HD content will be a deal-breaker for many living rooms, and, unless you've got a home theater PC or want to hook your laptop up to your HDTV, you're not going to be able to take advantage of the convenience from the comfort of the couch. Further, a complicated download and rule system probably won't get any iTunes Store customers to toss out their iPhones and iPods anytime soon, especially since Video on Demand is primarily designed and marketed so heavily as a streaming service.

Ultimately, and as with so many brand-new products like this, we're going to have to wait and see how consumers respond. Amazon has proven that it is very interested in the digital video distribution market, so we're expecting a major push behind Video on Demand and an adaptive strategy to make it an appealing service.